1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to disaster prevention system for offshore oil wells and in particular to a supplemental disaster preventive system to provide means to insure human, equipment and environmental safety and associated cost avoidance during the offshore well drilling process under all conceived/feasible accidents/failures conditions. The overall system design concept, related procedures/processes and many associated system components to provide major cost reduction benefits for the entire life cycle (drilling, completion, production and abandonment) for both accident/failure and normal/uneventful operations.
2. Description of Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 1.98
Shortly after the 2010 offshore oil well catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, it became obvious that British Petroleum (BP), the entire oil industry, and/or the US Government were unprepared to effectively stop the gushing oil or the means to clean it up.
Throughout the first two plus months of the disaster numerous re-sealing, capturing, clogging, killing and capping techniques were unsuccessfully attempted and several high risk/cost ‘normal’ well drilling processes were brought to light.
The successful 20 July re-seal, capture and cap ‘Rube Goldberg’/‘Kluge’ (said with admiration) was a simplistic but effective temporary solution for the catastrophic symptoms of the problem—where the primary operative phrase is ‘temporary solution for the catastrophic symptoms’.
The enormous somewhat/sometimes unquantifiable costs of the (or of a future) incident includes:
Human life
Environment
Drilling platform
Well (the equipment and the associated labor and its potential production)
Equipment and labor associated with the numerous re-seal, capture, and cap ‘quick fixes’
Equipment and labor associated with the relief/kill wells
Gulf clean-up
Tourist and fishing industry
Local community
Public opinion relating to the oil industry and the government
Nation and international financial markets
The prior art ‘blowout prevender’ (BOP) is intended to close off the well in case of an uncontrolled/emergency condition (blowout). It's a multi mega-buck, multi-ton device installed on the seafloor having various means/methods, with the design intent of closing a well. The most technically difficult is if/when a pipe and/or pipes (drill, casing, etc.) are within the well. The BOP must ‘ram’ through the pipe(s) and close off the well. That seems difficult, but add the extreme water pressure and low temperatures, the more extreme oil pressure and high temperatures and the prior art BOP is likely not going to work. After the Macondo's well was finally closed, the BOP was pulled up and evaluated—it was functional but did not do the job.
As offshore oil drilling/production continues in the future it seems only rational that the government as well as oil industry itself would demand, as a prime priority the development of improved equipment/systems and processes.
Whatever the cause(s) (human neglect/error, equipment failure, etc.) of the 2010 oil well disaster and whatever means are developed to insure no such similar failure and/or related impacts reoccurs, there are potentially more likely and more damaging events—specifically natural disasters and (accidental or deliberate) human intervention that must also be addressed.
The focus of the ‘quick fix’ was to stop/control the symptoms of the immediate catastrophe—the gushing oil.
What is needed is an overall systems design and implementation approach that provides the means to reduce/eliminate the causes and impacts of any conceived/realistic threats to oil wells in the future and further provides more reliable, practical and cost effective means to accomplish the oil well drilling task.